Saving Lincoln Movie & Friday Flash 55 "Booth's Lament"

The website is www.savinglincoln.com  . Please do not confuse with the movie "Lincoln" starring Daniel Day Lewis - which I also really loved!)

This really looks interesting - told from the perspective of Lincoln's law partner and self-proclaimed body guard, Ward Hill Lamon.  It is an independent (epic) film, and one can donate and help them finance the film's release at Kickstarter (it is on the above link).

I also just watched on Netflix "History's Mysteries: Lincoln: The Untold Stories"  It explores writings by his former law partner and friend, William Herndon, who felt it was his duty to be the biographer of the "real" Lincoln.  Herndon didn't like the "mythical-like" portraiture Lincoln was fast accumulating after his death and wanted the real Lincoln, whom he admired and loved, to be known.  The public didn't take to it and it sat in the Library of Congress for years, ridiculed by historians.  Not until the 1980's did it get "dusted off" and examined.   I believe the book is entitled: "Herndon's Lincoln" and I will be downloading it on my Nook.

I wrote a Friday Flash 55 last summer and I don't think I ever posted it.  I am digging it up and posting it now. It is about Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Also linking with Dverse Open Link Night #80.

 

John Wilkes Booth's Lament

Our cause being lost,

I have given up all

that makes life sweet and holy.

Repent?  I may before God,

but not man.

With the curse of Cain

I must fight the course,

and why?

God simply made me

the instrument of his punishment!

May He let me die bravely;

'tis all that's left me.

by Margaret Bednar, Art Happens 365, July 5, 2012 (selected words from last diary entry)

Below is the appointment book John Wilkes Booth carried on his body and wrote in after the April 14 assassination.  HERE is the entire entry.  Being an actor, he loved words, drama, and the limelight, but I took the liberty to shorten it for him in 55 words in the above poem.

The first place I visited in Washington D.C. was Ford's Theatre.  I sat in the seats and looked up into the balcony where Booth shot President Lincoln and then he jumped to the stage shouting in Latin "Sic simper Tyrannis" (Thus always to tyrants).  

A walked the winding stairs upon which Booth tread, derringer in his pocket, vengeance in his heart.  Before Gettysburg, Booth's original plan was to kidnap Lincoln and transport him to the South.  If he had been successful, would history have rewritten him a hero as the "winner" writes the pages of history?

The museum under the theatre is amazing.  I spent two hours slowly absorbing history and viewing the actual pieces that carried out this tragic deed.  Booth's actions killed the very man who would have shown compassion and forgiveness to the South... instead, healing took a very, very long time.

And if you are REALLY a Lincoln follower, there is also a book "Herndon's Informants":  Publication of this long-awaited volume makes available for the first time in complete and accessible form the most important source of information on Lincoln's early life. For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally. Up to now, the valuable information he collected has been available only in a microfilm edition in the Library of Congress, of such poor quality that it has been rarely used, particularly since there was no table of contents or adequate index, and in collections at the Huntington Library and the Illinois State Historical Library. The only previous publication of Herndon's materials, more than a half century ago, contains less than 10 percent of the collection and is so unreliable that scholars have hesitated to use it. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis have earned the gratitude and admiration of scholars by taking on the daunting task of collating the collections in the three libraries, painstakingly deciphering the all but illegible handwriting of Herndon and some of his informants, and carefully documenting the entire work.

How cool is that?  I will be buying this book as well.  (I just bought it through B&N.  I had to order it though, they said that the publisher has designated it a "must order" book - it isn't to be stocked.   I wonder why? It isn't that expensive.  It will be shipped directly to my door, though.)

For those with further interest, following is a link which claims might have the earliest known portrait of a young Abraham Lincoln:

http://www.lincolnportrait.com/index.html